Opinion: Labor preparing its Donald Trump excuses already

The impact of Trump tariffs is minuscule compared to the economic self-harm we have done, writes Matt Canavan.

Donald Trump’s (left) policies are already being used by Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

The last week has seen the creation of a new Australian cottage industry in making predictions about how Donald Trump would hurt the Australian economy: tariffs, inflation, war, the death of democracy, you name it.

Our Treasurer even got his “dog ate my homework” excuse out early, saying that Donald Trump would cause “a small reduction in our output and additional price pressures, particularly in the short term”.

This Chicken Little act brings to mind the wisdom of Matthew 7:3: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”

The speculation is that Donald Trump may impose a 10 per cent tariff on Australian goods exported to the US. This would not be a good thing for Australia.

But the impact of such a small tariff is minuscule compared to the economic self-harm we have done in recent years.

We have stopped using our abundant natural energy resources causing our energy prices to more than double. We now have electricity and gas prices two to three times higher than the United States. This “energy tariff” makes everything more expensive in Australia, and it is a much greater impost on the Australian economy than anything Trump will do.

Even under Joe Biden the United States last year produced more oil, than any country, in any year, ever. Donald Trump plans to take the US out of the Paris agreement and take this energy gap between Australia and the US to another level.

The global climate change agenda is more dead than disco and Australia should get out of it as soon as possible so we can use our coal, gas and uranium to bring down energy prices.

Donald Trump has appointed Elon Musk to slash red tape while we impose more and more hurdles on anyone with the temerity to want to invest in Australia. The Albanese government stopped a new gold mine from being built because of concerns over a mythical bee. This “investment tariff” is a much bigger deal for us than the US election results.

Anthony Albanese botched the opening up of Australia’s borders post-Covid-19. More than 1 million people in net terms have arrived in Australia, double the normal rate of migration. Working Australian families now must live in tents in our major cities. This “housing tariff” should be of much greater concern to Australians than the vagaries of the Electoral College.

The Labor government has hired an extra 26,000 public servants at a cost of $5 billion a year. In just two years, the federal government’s payroll bill has increased by a shocking 23 per cent. Labor’s lack of discipline on their spending of your money has led to an “inflation tariff”, with Australia having the highest inflation in the developed world.

The Australian government returned our industrial relations laws to the 1970s. They seem to believe that wages in a complex, modern economy should be set by central planners in a one size fits all approach for entire industries. It is no surprise that Australia’s productivity performance has been the worst on record in the two years since Labor came to office.

If Australia’s productivity rate had just been at the long term average over the past two years, then our average income would have been $8000 a year higher.

Australia’s living standards have dropped by more than any other developed country since the end of Covid-19. This has nothing to do with Donald Trump but the listlessness of our own governments.

There appears no hope of waking our Prime Minister up to become interested in economics. His major agenda now is to ban kids from social media, including apparently YouTube.

Australia needs to stop blaming others for our economic woes. We are the luckiest country in the world. We have the greatest reserves of coal, gas, uranium and water per person than anywhere in the world outside Antarctica.

But our natural resources do not provide us wealth automatically. Whining about Donald Trump might be good therapy for some, but it won’t create a self-sustaining economy.

We must stop worrying about other countries and return to making our own luck. We have all the resources to create our own sovereignty and independence from what other countries do. We simply must use our natural resources, make sensible decisions on spending and regulation and unleash the massive potential and opportunity that exists among Australians.

Matt Canavan is an LNP senator for Queensland